


With Open Eyes

by lferion



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 1k Gigolas, Canon Compliant, Dwarves, Flash Fic, Just because they are dead doesn't mean we aren't still friends, M/M, Meet the Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 18:11:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9397079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: Gimli takes Legolas to see Fili and Kili.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morgynleri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/gifts).



> hanks go to Morgynleri for encouragement & sanity-checking. She gave me the prompt: _Returning home, and Gimli introducing Legolas to Fíli and Kíli as his friend/more-than-friend - can be an everyone lives AU or canon where he's at their tombs._ Written for the effort to get the number of Legolas/Gimli fics on AO3 over the 1k mark. This piece brings the total to 994.
> 
> Companion piece to [Old Friends and New](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9386900)

Legolas was nothing loath to go anywhere Gimli wished, though into the depths of Erebor to where the honored dead lay in stone would not have been one of his first destinations. It was odd being so deep under stone. Aglarond had been very different, (and Khazad-dum, though the urgency of their quest had more to answer for there). Indeed, the upper parts of Erebor were under at least as much stone if one considered that the most part of the mountain was overhead, even in the chambers as vast as the throne platform and the (rebuilt, twice as good as before! he had been informed, several times, by several different Dwarves, each of whom insisted that Legolas admire the historic golden floor, though not by Gimli, who had looked as though he wanted to stop each and every one of them from saying anything at all) Hall of Kings. Perhaps it was that the ceilings were so high, the spaces large and airy. The passages and colonnades | among the tombs were not in any way low or cramped — some of them were quite large — but there was a weight, a solemnity, a heaviness to the whole area it seemed. Not that it was grim, or in the least dark. He tried to think of a place in his father's halls that was similar. The closest he could come was the quiet sadness of the empty rooms that had been his mother's, and that was not very close. 

Gimli had his 'solemn' face on, the expression that Legolas had learned meant his beloved was thinking serious thought, feeling the subject of those thoughts deeply. (It had taken him shamefully long to recognize the subtleties of Gimli's expressions, in part because he had for too long not believed that Dwarves could be subtle. He wondered what he might have learned of Thorin's Company if he had been a little more open to the idea then. (He positively winced at the memory of his exchange with the one he now knew was Gimli's father, insulting both Gimli and his mother in one breath. No one had — yet — taken him to task about that, not even Gimli himself, who had laughed uproariously when Legolas confessed the tale to him. Now of course, Legolas was coming to understand that Gimli was a great beauty among Dwarves, which did add a humorous note to the whole thing. Still, Legolas knew he owed Gloin an apology, but that was a task for another day.

Gimli had stopped before an imposing archway, one of the seven-angled sort that marked the main gate and the public halls. Deeply carved cirth no doubt named the family and occupants, but he did not give that more than a passing thought, for he recognized the biers within. Three of them, looking disturbingly as they had eighty years previous. Legolas did not have very coherent memories of the Battle of Five Armies, his first real, bloody, people dying battle, but he did remember the state funeral for Thorin and his heirs. Sister-sons. _Nephews_. He had not properly noticed their names. At the time, he had no idea what the general relationships between the various nearly identical bearded fellows were, nor had he cared.

"Your cousins; _they_ were your cousins. The princes, who died in the battle." How had he not know that? Realized it sooner?

"Aye, they are." Gimli's voice was fond, and there was a note that suggested, lovingly but with an edge (Legolas would never have Gimli soften his edges, even when they cut), 'took you long enough.' He was standing between the biers of the princes, Fili and Kili, looking at their faces. Legolas did not fail to note the present tense. Still present in memory. And likeness.

The carving was extraordinary. Or, no, Legolas realized, the figures on the biers were not carved, not sculpture, for they were dressed as the bodies had been for the funeral. Returned to the stone from which Aulë had shaped them. The tales had it right. And very wrong. The tales, told in derision, implied that dwarves had no souls, no feär, and thus simply slumped back into mud and rock. Legolas knew better. (He ought to have known better from the moment he first saw the Company, certainly during the fight in Laketown, and the battle afterward, for he had seen the light of their spirits himself, though he had not thought it that at the time.) He felt touched, privileged to be shown, given this knowledge, the truth that turned the insult on its head.

Gimli was looking at him now, that fond gleam in his eye that said he'd been waiting for Legolas to come back to the moment. A step brought Legolas to Gimli's side, and he was immediately calmer, warmer. Their hands found each other. Gimli grinned, and Legolas braced himself for he knew not quite what. It wouldn't be bad, but it might be embarrassing. Would probably be embarrassing.

"Well, lads, I've found him," Gimli announced, fully as if Fili and Kili could hear him. "My heart. You'll laugh yourselves sick to know who it is."


End file.
